Apple to pull apps which don’t comply with safety feature

App Tracking Transparency will ask for users’ permission before companies are allowed to track their online activity

Apple is set to release a new anti-tracking feature next year and announced developers who do not ‘play by the rules’ will be moved out of the Apple Store.

The upcoming feature, called App Tracking Transparency, will ask for users’ permission before companies and apps are allowed to track their online activity, which they can either deny or approve with a click of a button.

It was set to launch this year, but Apple pushed the rollout date to allow developers more time to make changes to comply with the new rules.

The privacy feature has, however, been met with criticism from some companies and advertisers, specifically Facebook, who claim the efforts are noncompetitive and will impact small businesses.

Facebook slammed Apple over the summer, saying it will cripple app makers’ ability to make money from targeted advertising.

Many companies and developers have also spoke out against Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature from when the news of it first surfaced in August – all which have cited the loss of revenue.

However, Apple said that the feature aims to give people more choice over how they want to be tracked by companies on the internet – and the ability to say no if they don’t want tracking.

Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering Craig Federighi said: Its aim is to empower our users to decide when or if they want to allow an app to track them in a way that could be shared across other companies’ apps or websites.

Developers who fail to meet the standard can have their apps taken down from the app store, Federighi said in an online keynote speech to the European Data Protection and Privacy Conference.